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“So far, no single piece of evidence has been made public proving that the Trump campaign joined with Russia to steal the US presidency – nothing….Stop to let that thought reverberate for a moment.”

— Paul Wood, BBC News, Washington, March 30, 2017

Here’s what bugs me about the Russia hacking story: Why would the media, whose credibility is already at its lowest point ever, go after Trump when they had no facts to back them up?

Why?

Do the media bosses really think that if they set their hair on fire and run around yelling, “The Russians did it, the Russians did it”, the American people will sheepishly nod in agreement?

And what do they think the Russians actually did?

Why they meddled in our elections, the media tells us.

Okay, but how?

Russia hackers stole damaging emails from the Democrats at the DNC, they tell us.

Alright, but how did that effect the elections?

Well– according to a report on the BBC–

“the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated “bots”, then on Russia’s English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US “news” sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media.

…Russia downloads the online voter rolls. The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of “microtargeting”. Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters.

“You are stealing the stuff and pushing it back into the US body politic,” said the former official, “you know where to target that stuff when you’re pushing it back.”

This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed.” (BBC)

So the Russians stole the election by bashing Hillary on Facebook? Is that what you’re telling me?

And they needed the Trump team’s help to carry out this nefarious operation?

Is that the nuttiest explanation you’ve ever heard? And yet some people believe this baloney.

Did you know that the FBI opened this investigation in July 2016? That’s eight months ago.

And what have they got to show for it?

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

So far, there’s not a shred of evidence that Russia hacked the DNC computer system or that anyone on the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election. They have nothing and they know it. But the farce goes on regardless. It’s all politics.

That’s not to say that their weren’t any connections between the 2016 political campaigns and Russia. There sure were, but the connections were all on Hillary’s side. As Robert Parry reports in his latest piece at Consortium News:

“An irony of the escalating hysteria about the Trump camp’s contacts with Russians is that one presidential campaign in 2016 did exploit political dirt that supposedly came from the Kremlin and other Russian sources. Friends of that political campaign paid for this anonymous hearsay material, shared it with American journalists and urged them to publish it to gain an electoral advantage. But this campaign was not Donald Trump’s; it was Hillary Clinton’s….

Indeed, you have the words of Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, in his opening statement at last week’s public hearing on so-called “Russia-gate.”

Schiff’s seamless 15-minute narrative of the Trump campaign’s alleged collaboration with Russia followed the script prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele who was hired as an opposition researcher last June to dig up derogatory information on Donald Trump.

Steele, who had worked for Britain’s MI-6 in Russia, said he tapped into ex-colleagues and unnamed sources inside Russia, including leadership figures in the Kremlin, to piece together a series of sensational reports that became the basis of the current congressional and FBI investigations into Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow…

Since he was not able to go to Russia himself, Steele based his reports mostly on multiple hearsay from anonymous Russians who claim to have heard some information from their government contacts before passing it on to Steele’s associates who then gave it to Steele who compiled this mix of rumors and alleged inside dope into “raw” intelligence reports….” (“The Sleazy Origins of Russia-gate”, Consortium News)

Get the picture? The whole case against Trump is based on a pile of unverified BS from some ex-MI-6 flunkey trying to make a killing off sexed up rumors of imaginary collusion. (BTW, Steele’s “dodgy dossier” also contained the idiotic claims that Trump hired Russian prostitutes to urinate on him in a swanky hotel in Moscow.)

Parry also adds this revealing comment at the end of his article:

“In the last weeks of the Obama administration, I was told that the outgoing intelligence chiefs had found no evidence to verify Steele’s claims but nevertheless believed them to be true….”

Of course they said they believed it, because they know what side their bread is buttered on. What would you expect them to say; that its all an absurd witchhunt based on nothing but sketchy rumors? The Intel chiefs are no different than anyone else. They’re just trying to placate their paymasters like any good employee.

Check out this comment that FBI Director Comey made during the recent Congressional hearings on alleged Russian meddling. It helps to expose what a political animal the man really is:

“He (Putin) hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was that he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.

They engaged in a multifaceted campaign to undermine our democracy.

They were unusually loud in their intervention. It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew, that they wanted us to see what they were doing.

Their number one mission is to undermine the credibility of our entire democracy enterprise of this nation.

They’ll be back. They’ll be back, in 2020. They may be back in 2018.”

Nice, eh?

ORDER IT NOW

So among his other talents, Comey also knows how to read minds. He knows that Putin hates Hillary and favors Trump. He knows the Russians “engaged in a multifaceted campaign to undermine our democracy”, even though he hasn’t produced a lick of proof to verify his claims.

And he knows that the Russians “number one mission is to undermine the credibility of our entire democracy”, even though– according to a recent survey– the main reason Hillary lost the election was because undecided voters swarmed to Trump en masse after Comey announced he was reopening the investigation of the Clinton Foundation just 11 days before the election.

I guess Comey forgot to mention that part.

The Russia hacking fairytale is the biggest joke in history. I can’t believe we’re even wasting time on it. Unfortunately, gullible liberals have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. A recent CBS poll shows that 67% of Democrats think Russia interfered in the election to help Trump, while only 13% of Republicans believe the same. (CBS News)

What does it all mean? Are Democrats more prone to believe uncorroborated politically-motivated rubbish than Republicans or are they just so blinded by their hatred for Trump that they’ll accept any dirt the media dishes up?

What does it all mean? Are Democrats more prone to believe uncorroborated politically-motivated rubbish than Republicans or are they just so blinded by their hatred for Trump that they’ll accept any dirt the media dishes up?

It only means that people tend to believe the stories told by their own priests, rather than the priests of a competing sect.

It’s funny though how back in the GWB times they used to call themselves, very seriously, ‘the reality-based community’, and held their opponents in contempt for ‘creating their own reality’. Oh, the irony…

Beliefs (premises, really) determine what "information" each of us believe.

For decades the underlying premises most people at least vaguely accepted were shared, so we had what amounted to a "news monoculture." Its owners & managers share a much stronger devotion to the Theocracy's sacraments than do the rest of us.

Now that the age of togetherness evaporates, growing numbers of people don't believe in the premises animating MSM reports.

This is why all the reports emanating from ABCNNBCBS et.al. are so confused. They have zero understanding of the principles involved.

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The story of golden showers on former Obama’s bed in a Moscow hotel fully resembles Slavic humor. I am pretty sure that no matter how much he was paid for this “fact”, some Russian “spy” is still laughing his behind off. Naturally, Steele would have added the videoing by KGB (which does not exist any more under that name, Mr Steele is a bit behind the ball).

The possibly Russian originator of this salacious “fact” is essentially saying with this joke that he does not care about either Obama/Clinton or Trump, it is all the same dumb US sh** and he is personally above it. That is the best cultural translation, plus the source’s assessment of both Presidential candidates (still candidates when this “report” was being prepared) appears to have been correct.

The US Deep State, the Clintons, the Democratic Party political appointees to CIA, FBI, NSA all were so blinded by powerlust that they were prepared to suck absolutely anything which could even remotely bring them closer to regaining power.

As Mike says, the most worrying is this new mass media practice to promote fact-free claims as a matter of routine. This is a new development: government official and talking heads come out into Main Sewer Media and start BSing and they do not need to ever stop, because they never need to supply any proof of what they were saying. Therefore, we can continue hearing about Russian hacking of US elections into eternity.

A recent CBS poll shows that 67% of Democrats think Russia interfered in the election to help Trump, while only 13% of Republicans believe the same. (CBS News)

If true (instead of being just another fake poll of fake media) what this really means, assuming that Democrats vs. Republicans divide US population approximately 1/2:1/2, is that 40% of US people are total, utter, complete, certifiable, self-admitted MORONS!

I suppose you're suggesting those who don't believe in the Democrat's Russia-ate-my-homework meme are in your view morons.

Please keep up the name calling. It will ensure your party's electoral success in the mid-terms and maybe in 2020 just as much as name calling (47% and Deplorables) ensured the electoral success of Romney and Hillary.

It's a great strategy. Stick with it.

Oh, here's a link to a video of a liberal who is also a political satirist who believes as I do, that name calling in the place of peaceful and respectful debate was in no small way responsible for Hillary's loss... https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-avg-fh_lsonsw&hsimp=yhs-fh_lsonsw&hspart=avg&p=british+political+satirist+hillary+trump+election+youtube#id=1&vid=fc7c800940d9d9a2276346d2a900a263&action=click

A century of ever more sophisticated propaganda, Chomsky’s “Manufactured Consent”, have left us unhinged as a nation. Rivals in business abroad are now automatically; enemies. We have long since stopped competing at any level except the military. Faced with a precipitous financial decline we don’t have a clue how to begin again to be competitive or to become solvent. The MSM exhibit the same symptoms as the rest of us and seem to have caught the very fevers they have been spreading.

Mr. Magill, if you look for a comprehensive theory of why we're at this place in history look no further than Robert Prechter's Socionomics.

Social Mood precedes all social action, and the Western world has existed in a social mood rally of historic proportion.

From adoption of fiat money & a 3.5 decade bond market rally to one Utopian public policy after another (e.g. wars on poverty, drugs, mental illness, badthink, etc. and attempts to eliminate war, hunger and a spread "democracy" to every corner of Earth), for 60 years people have behaved like they think resources are unlimited and all any problem requires is writing some magic incantations on paper, obtaining the necessary votes & issuing some more bonds.

Of course they said they believed it, because they know what side their bread is buttered on. What would you expect them to say; that its all an absurd witchhunt based on nothing but sketchy rumors? The Intel chiefs are no different than anyone else. They’re just trying to placate their paymasters like any good employee.

Ah, free men. There could never be enough of them.
It’s a pleasure to read you, Whitney.
But, thinking it over just a little: free individuals can be given space only in non-mainstream media.
The part of the media that is not connected, or fused!, with the power structure.

“What does it all mean? Are Democrats more prone to believe uncorroborated politically-motivated rubbish than Republicans or are they just so blinded by their hatred for Trump that they’ll accept any dirt the media dishes up?”

My vote is the latter.

The sincerely regrettably aspects of the Democrats’ fantasies about Russian interference is that 1) U.S. – Russian are at their lowest in history, even lower than during the cold war and that’s very dangerous and 2) the Democratic party, having lost it’s historical moorings in the working class and with labor and instead courting big donors and becoming mired in identity politics, will not recon it’s loss in 2016 to this cause and heal itself, but, will instead remain in erstwhile denial of their faults as Russian “interference” provides a useful dodge of their responsibility to right their ship.

I think the U.S. needs viable and loyal opposition parties as they provide checks on one another. And, I think that Democrats may well be on their way to obscurity.

That said, only a dunce like Trump, acting as childishly as he does, could resurrect the Democrats even if they don’t reform in much the same manner as G.W. Bush resurrected the Democrats and got Obama elected to two terms.

A recent CBS poll shows that 67% of Democrats think Russia interfered in the election to help Trump, while only 13% of Republicans believe the same. (CBS News)

If true (instead of being just another fake poll of fake media) what this really means, assuming that Democrats vs. Republicans divide US population approximately 1/2:1/2, is that 40% of US people are total, utter, complete, certifiable, self-admitted MORONS!

I suppose you’re suggesting those who don’t believe in the Democrat’s Russia-ate-my-homework meme are in your view morons.

Please keep up the name calling. It will ensure your party’s electoral success in the mid-terms and maybe in 2020 just as much as name calling (47% and Deplorables) ensured the electoral success of Romney and Hillary.

What does it all mean? Are Democrats more prone to believe uncorroborated politically-motivated rubbish than Republicans or are they just so blinded by their hatred for Trump that they’ll accept any dirt the media dishes up?

It only means that people tend to believe the stories told by their own priests, rather than the priests of a competing sect.

It's funny though how back in the GWB times they used to call themselves, very seriously, 'the reality-based community', and held their opponents in contempt for 'creating their own reality'. Oh, the irony...

Agreed.

Beliefs (premises, really) determine what “information” each of us believe.

For decades the underlying premises most people at least vaguely accepted were shared, so we had what amounted to a “news monoculture.” Its owners & managers share a much stronger devotion to the Theocracy’s sacraments than do the rest of us.

Now that the age of togetherness evaporates, growing numbers of people don’t believe in the premises animating MSM reports.

This is why all the reports emanating from ABCNNBCBS et.al. are so confused. They have zero understanding of the principles involved.

A century of ever more sophisticated propaganda, Chomsky's "Manufactured Consent", have left us unhinged as a nation. Rivals in business abroad are now automatically; enemies. We have long since stopped competing at any level except the military. Faced with a precipitous financial decline we don't have a clue how to begin again to be competitive or to become solvent. The MSM exhibit the same symptoms as the rest of us and seem to have caught the very fevers they have been spreading.
http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

Mr. Magill, if you look for a comprehensive theory of why we’re at this place in history look no further than Robert Prechter’s Socionomics.

Social Mood precedes all social action, and the Western world has existed in a social mood rally of historic proportion.

From adoption of fiat money & a 3.5 decade bond market rally to one Utopian public policy after another (e.g. wars on poverty, drugs, mental illness, badthink, etc. and attempts to eliminate war, hunger and a spread “democracy” to every corner of Earth), for 60 years people have behaved like they think resources are unlimited and all any problem requires is writing some magic incantations on paper, obtaining the necessary votes & issuing some more bonds.

I suppose you're suggesting those who don't believe in the Democrat's Russia-ate-my-homework meme are in your view morons.

Please keep up the name calling. It will ensure your party's electoral success in the mid-terms and maybe in 2020 just as much as name calling (47% and Deplorables) ensured the electoral success of Romney and Hillary.

It's a great strategy. Stick with it.

Oh, here's a link to a video of a liberal who is also a political satirist who believes as I do, that name calling in the place of peaceful and respectful debate was in no small way responsible for Hillary's loss... https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-avg-fh_lsonsw&hsimp=yhs-fh_lsonsw&hspart=avg&p=british+political+satirist+hillary+trump+election+youtube#id=1&vid=fc7c800940d9d9a2276346d2a900a263&action=click

Enjoy,

LF

You need to read with a bit more attention, because you completely turned around what I wrote: 40% of Americans believe their Main Sewer Media that Russia got Trump elected.

But you are right that I could not be called a friend of US even by the Deplorables who I support, at least not until all US wars abroad stop.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs developed automated voicemail system – please listen (Russian, then English) and tell us your opinion. Feedback appreciated!

“You have reached the Russian embassy, your call is very important to us. To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent, press 1. To use the services of Russian hackers press 2. To request election interference, press 3 and wait until the next election campaign. Please note that all calls are recorded for quality improvement and training purposes.”

Do the media bosses really think that if they set their hair on fire and run around yelling, “The Russians did it, the Russians did it”, the American people will sheepishly nod in agreement?

Yes. To a limited extent, they’re right. I remember Aldous Huxley gave a speech on hypnosis, and he said studies showed that roughly 20 percent of the population could be hypnotized, 20 percent could not, and 60 percent were somewhere in between. I have no idea if that’s true, but it sounds like a decent estimate of how many can be told what to believe by mass media indoctrination. In other words, there are a lot of people who will believe anything the talking head consensus tells them, a lot of people who are not influenced much at all, and a hell of a lot of people who will buy some of it, most of the time, or most of it, some of the time, etc.

Big Media has an effect. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a ton of closely-held proprietary research that showed them that the ratio pretty much always favors them (that is, they influence more people than they repel). I think something must be done about mass media. I don’t know exactly what, though I suppose strict enforcement special media anti-trust laws would be a good start. Tax breaks for smaller media companies?

Put another way, I’m amazed at how much legitimacy Big Media retains, compared to how much they deserve. Perks of the PR biz, I suppose. I comfort myself with the knowledge that their legitimacy and ratings are on a solidly downward trend.

So among his other talents, Comey also knows how to read minds. He knows that Putin hates Hillary and favors Trump.

That much seems obvious.

even though– according to a recent survey– the main reason Hillary lost the election was because undecided voters swarmed to Trump en masse after Comey announced he was reopening the investigation of the Clinton Foundation just 11 days before the election.

At most, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The election was looming, and voters knew it was time to shit or get off the pot. Given the 24/7/365 Big Media smear job against Trump The Lunatic, they needed a last straw, any last straw. They were positively yearning for one, and the reopened investigation was the most convenient.

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